What you’re seeing: Messages like “Validation service unavailable” or timeouts.
Check the Dashboard diagnostics
The quickest way to confirm a VIES outage is from the Dashboard:
- Go to EU VAT Checker → Dashboard
- Find the Environment Status section
- Look at VIES WSDL reachability
Expected status
You should see ✓ 200 OK · 67 ms (or similar). If it’s red or shows an error, the connection is failing.
Quick checks (2 minutes)
- Check the VIES website manually (it might be down)
- Wait 5 minutes and retry
- Confirm your site is using HTTPS
If it keeps failing
- •Your hosting firewall might block outgoing requests
- •PHP SOAP might be disabled (check Dashboard → Environment Status)
- •A caching/security plugin might interfere
- •Allow checkout when VIES is unavailable (recommended for sales continuity)